Sunday morning and looks like a beautiful fall day ahead of us. I have my cup of coffee and usual wandering mind as my companions. This morning it has wandered to a conversation (facebook) I had with Miles Coleman, my Kung Fu friend and Herbalist.I had made an observation that he is a Taoist with a bald head and I am a Buddhist with long hair...and had asked him, what's up that? He responded in his usual way..."ahh, the mystery of the Tao". So true.
The Tao is totally mysterious. Life is mysterious. None of us really know why we are here or what life is all about. On many levels, life is one big Zen riddle or Koan. The Tao is definitely a paradoxical enigma...and I am glad it is.
What if we did know the Secret of Life and were able to totally figure out every life's problems and boil it down to a formula? In my mind it would be boring. If it weren't for the chase...like the search for the holy grail (monty python style is the best)...life would just be almost too regimented, rigid and stale. Or at least I think it would be. I can't imagine always knowing what is going to happen. Where's the fun in that? Where's the mystery?
What is more fun...not knowing what is going to happen? Or knowing what is going to happen? The Packers play the Vikings today...what is more fun and pulsating with life...not knowing the outcome or knowing the outcome?
When facing a fierce opponent in kumite or with a sword...the not-knowing is what makes you alive! It is the mystery of the unknown that gives us life!
It is the not-knowing that makes this journey here on earth interesting. Yes, at times it is hard and cruel...but this allows us to see the beauty and the ease by which life can be as well. The not-knowing sends us on searches, holy quests, hermitages into the mountains or even dabbling with multiple martial arts to find the ultimate in self-defense.
Well....my coffee is getting cold and my wandering mind has drifted onto my list of things to get done before the football game. I better get going on it...I wonder where it will lead me today? Go Packers!
Ahh...the Mystery of the Tao.
Hands palm to palm,
Shinzen
not knowing could well be the whole point. The self could just sit in bliss for infinity and produce no forms. Or it could produce a trillion forms and enjoy the mystery of being them all but forgetting in each case it was the ultimate self.
ReplyDeleteOh, that is Vedanta :D
Ye, life would be very boring if it was a formula and luckily there seems to be a cunning trap that the self set for itself in that when it knows it all it becomes reconfigured to now wonder how it could know it all plus an entity that knew it all, and the mystery restarts.
Oh, that is Douglas Adams :D
But yes, I can not come up with an original statement, ah fucking Tao :D